The Final Entry (maybe)

Well, we are all home and followed up our missions trip with an intense week of VBS here at are home church of FBC.

I (Pastor Dave) am at Camp Manitoumi in Illinois. I appreciate your prayers as I speak to the SHers here. A number of you had requested the final entry, so here it is.

THURSDAY

Our final day of major ministry work. We were challenged by Pastor Jeff with a pile of 1500(!) flyers to hand out! A smile is crawling across my face as I think about the teams reaction. They went out and canvassed hard and fast. It took just a little over 2 hours to get them all done. Which brings our total up to 3000+ homes reached with information about Oasis Baptist Church. The team was tired, but they had accomplished a lot.

For lunch, we got to go to the Dale's beutiful home and have some GREAT burgers, hotdogs, and chicken off the grill. We also did some relaxing and then went back to the hotel to get ready for our final evening of VBS.

VBS was awesome, our registraion for the week exceeded 50 and we had a BIG group for the last day. Everything went very well. Pastor Dave raced all the kids, we had the GREAT BIG-WHEEL race, and we also had to find out if Awesome Aaron (puppets) won his triathalon. After announcong the winners, all the kids sang and shouted and had a great time. Pastor Jeff then came up and had all the kids line up and give big hugs to all the team. I saw some tears from some unlikely sources!

After that, in the midst of an unusual Phoenix downpour, we cleaned up. The team worked hard and fast getting every thing back to normal. We then headed off to eat at a nice restaraunt. BUT...it was closed, so we ordered Papa Johns and had it delivered to Pastor Dave and Jen's room for devos and food.

FRIDAY

Our trip to the Grand Canyon. Four hours each way, and well worth it. For all but three of us (Jen, Mel, and Kristen) it was our first visit. All I can say is WOW! God has given us a magnificant display of his creation there. We all enjoyed the view, acted like tourists and bought up a bunch of souveniers, and wandered around avoiding Pastor Dave. (because I was a bit grumpy, for some reason - sorry guys)

On the way home, Pastor Dave had figured we had saved up enough to go out REALLY nice, so we had Outback! OH YEAH!.

Once we got home, the girls packed up and the guys got the trailer ready. Most of the girls just threw their luggage in withthe guys so they wouldn't have to check any luggage. The guys got all pre-packed and went to bed since they would be getting up @ 5:30 the next morning.

SPLITING UP

The next day, the guys (with MAJOR help from Mike Griswold who the Lord miraculously transported to Phoenix just for us) made it from Phoenix to Tulsa in one day. WIth quick stops and bathroom/gas/food stops.

The ladies flew home, and got back late that evening.

The guys then had to get from Tulsa to Elyria (with a stop in St Louis to pick up Derek and David Burman) NO PROBLEM! They got in around 1am, unloaded the van, put stuff away, and then headed home to get a bit of sleep then rise for VBS (as I stated at the beginning)


There is so much I want to add to this, but you will all have to come to our Report service this Sunday (July27) @6pm to here it for yourself.

I will try to add more pics later!!

Pastor Dave